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Blood Lead, Systemic Inflammation, and Blood Pressure: Exploring Associations and Mediation Effects in Workers Exposed to Lead

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Abstract

Relationships of lead exposure with blood pressure and blood lead with inflammation have been previously established yet, but the conclusions are still controversial. The objective of our study was to investigate the role of systemic inflammation in the relationships between blood lead concentration and blood pressure. We quantified the levels of blood lead and white blood cell count in 505 lead-exposed workers with 842 observations. Associations between blood lead, white blood cell count, and blood pressure were evaluated by using linear mixed models. We further performed mediation analysis to investigate the role of white blood cell count in the associations between blood lead concentration and blood pressure. We observed that each 1% increase of blood lead levels was significantly positively associated with a 0.9%, 1.7%, and 1.1% increases in systolic blood pressure, white blood cell count, and blood platelet count, respectively. Also, we found that the levels of white blood cell count were positively correlated with diastolic blood pressure and systolic blood pressure in a dose–response manner. Mediation analysis showed that the levels of white blood cell significantly mediated the associations between concentration of blood lead and systolic blood pressure. Collectively, our findings suggest that blood lead was positively associated with systolic blood pressure and that systemic inflammation might play a key role in this association.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to all volunteers who participated in this study.

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant number 2020kfyXJJS005, Recipient: Jixuan Ma) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (grant number 2019M652656, Recipient: Jixuan Ma).

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Author notes

  1. Haijiao Wang and Jixuan Ma contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Third People’s Hospital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Urumqi, Xinjiang, 830091, China

    Ping He, Chengxin Yang, Dongkui He & Shiyu Zhao

  2. Department of Occupational & Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, Hubei, China

    Yujia Xie & Jixuan Ma

  3. Key Laboratory of Environment and Health, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Environmental Protection, and State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubating), School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, Hubei, China

    Yujia Xie & Jixuan Ma

  4. National Center of Occupational Safety and Health, National Health Commission, Beijing, 102300, China

    Haijiao Wang

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He, P., Yang, C., He, D. et al. Blood Lead, Systemic Inflammation, and Blood Pressure: Exploring Associations and Mediation Effects in Workers Exposed to Lead. Biol Trace Elem Res 199, 2573–2581 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-020-02397-0

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